by Building Fires in the Snow- A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction
It was probably just her imagination, but Alaska this evening felt colder than Canada had this morning, as if the snow here had only melted within the last day or two. The air was chilly and clean, the countryside tinged with the barest haze of green, even though it was already mid-June. Alaska hadn’t even been part of the US when Tierney was born, although it became Number 49 just a year later. She and the state of Alaska were practically the same age! Well, how do you like that? She could perfectly picture her father uttering the stock phrase, feigning surprise before breaking into his crooked smile. Tierney realized with a pang that she missed him; she would have to call him the minute he got home from his honeymoon.
Robert was in a good mood, too. He offered to buy her a burger at the next roadhouse, by way of celebration. Like the other road-houses they’d seen, this one resembled a plywood shack with a gas pump out front, and the handful of patrons at the bar all appeared to be locals. Tierney and Robert left their packs inside the door, took seats at a small table, and once they’d given their order to the middle-aged bartender who doubled as the waiter, they studied Robert’s map to be sure they took the right road to Fairbanks in the morning.
When their food arrived, Robert cleared his throat and pronounced himself “impressed” that Tierney’s parents had let her travel alone. Something about the way he said it made her think that he’d been pondering this information ever since they’d met, and that while he strongly disapproved, he wanted her to know he was open-minded. He reached for his hamburger.
She decided to tell him the truth. “First of all, not ‘parents,’ plural. My mom died when I was ten—six years ago—so it’s more like my dad and his new wife.” Tierney kept her eyes on Robert to make sure he did the math. She dipped a French fry in the ketchup she’d squeezed onto her plate. “They’re on their honeymoon right now, as a matter of fact. Mexico.”
“They don’t know you left?” Scandalized, Robert forgot his manners and spoke with his mouth full; a gobbet of half-chewed food fell onto the edge of his plate, where they both stared at it.
“Yuck.” Tierney made a face. Robert hastily covered the soggy remnant with his unused napkin. “Nobody knows anything yet. At least, I don’t think they do,” she said. “I figure I have about a week before the shit hits the fan. Once they get back from their trip, I’ll call them.”
“So you’re basically running away from home?” Robert held his burger in both hands, no longer eating.
“I guess so. Basically.” Tierney shrugged. “Makes it sound worse than what it is.”
“Which is what?”
“Just, you know, time to be on my own. Make my own life.”
“Don’t you think you’re a little young?” Robert still wasn’t eating.
“Not really. My folks eloped when they were seventeen.”
“No kidding.” Robert finally took another bite of his food. “Mine were almost thirty before they tied the knot.” Tierney was relieved that he’d decided to change the subject. “They took me to Mexico once,” he continued. “The Yucatán Peninsula. Also to Guatemala.”
Tierney tried to think where Guatemala was, deciding it was most likely in Brazil.
“And they took me to Europe after my high school graduation,” he added. “This is my first time in western Canada, though.”
“Dang. You must be rich.”
“Not me. My parents. They paid, and I had a great time.” Robert grinned, as if the finances of travel were inconsequential.
“Are they paying for this?”
He shook his head.
“Buy me a chocolate shake,” she said, not asking.
“NO.”
They both laughed.
“So you’re an only child, too?” Robert asked. “Like me?”
“I have an older sister, but she’s married. They already have two kids, and she’s pregnant again.”
“What does she think of you leaving?”
“She doesn’t know. They live in Rapid City.” Tierney looked at him. “It’s in South Dakota. I live in North Dakota.”
“No other relatives?” Robert insisted. “What about grandparents?”
“One grandfather, but he’s an alkie. My dad refuses to have anything to do with him.”
They finished their meal in silence. Tierney wiped her mouth with her napkin. “That was really good,” she said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Tierney asked as they waited at the bar to pay the check. “Why not?” she pressed, when he shook his head.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Robert countered.
“No.”
“Why not?’ he teased.
“Don’t want one,” she said. “Don’t get any big ideas.”
That night Robert gave her a quick good-night hug in the tent. Tierney tensed, wondering if he was going to try something, but he turned away from her in his sleeping bag and soon fell asleep. She decided he was just a harmless, friendly guy. Besides, now that he knew she was underage—jailbait—she doubted that he’d mess with her. Tierney thought about her dad and mom, wondering if they’d both felt an immediate attraction the minute they’d met at that long-ago summer dance, if each had thought about the other, “This is the person I’m meant to be with.” Not for the first time, Tierney wondered if that’s how it was going to be for her: knowing right away that some guy was the one she was destined to marry. She had yet to meet any boy who’d had anything even remotely like that effect on her.
Her father was really going to be pissed when he found out she’d left. Pissed and hurt. But then again, it wasn’t Tierney’s fault that he had chosen fakey, too-much-makeup Helen over his own daughter; Tierney knew she and her new stepmother would never in a million years be able to coexist under the same roof. Her dad sometimes complained about how stubborn Tierney was, claiming she went “too far.” Like the time a few years ago when she refused to eat any of the rabbit stew that their neighbors had shared with them. He scolded her for wasting food, insisting she remain at the table until she finished her portion, but by ten o’clock, when she was still sitting there, her food untouched, he’d finally sent her to bed. Or the time this winter when she hadn’t talked to Helen for a whole week in protest of Helen’s scolding her for something Tierney couldn’t even remember now. “You made your point, missy,” her dad said tightly. “Can you please just give it a rest?”
Now, she wondered, would he think that in traveling to Alaska, she had literally gone too far? Had she passed some point of no return? How could she explain to him that the idea of Alaska had struck her out of the blue but had been so alluring that she couldn’t resist? How were you supposed to know how far was too far until you tried it, and wasn’t it also true that what might be “too far” for one person, would be just right for someone else?
In the morning, Tierney gathered from their next driver, another lone male in a truck, this time a dark-green pick-up, that Tok was pronounced “toke,” prompting a giggle from Robert before Tierney grasped the reference to smoking weed. She frowned at her traveling companion, thinking he should grow up. Then she wondered if Robert might be a pothead. The driver was very quiet at first, and as the miles passed beneath the wheels of the truck, revealing one light-filled vista after the next and almost no sign of human habitation, Tierney felt deeply content and oddly at home. The land appeared to be every bit as unsettled as she had hoped.
“A person could get lost out there,” she said gleefully, indicating a wide flat valley fringed with dark trees that extended all the way to a distant range of silhouetted saw-toothed peaks.
“People do get lost here,” the driver said with a frown. Although her first impression had been one of an unkempt middle-aged man, Tierney now noticed that the driver’s beard was in fact neatly trimmed, his fingernails clean, and that he wasn’t nearly as old as she had supposed. He smelled of soap, not sweat. “Two fellows from Germany overwintered in an abandoned trapper’s cabin on the Yukon last yea
r,” he told them. “They built themselves a raft and tried to float out after the river broke up, but only one of ’em made it.”
“Drowned?” Robert guessed.
“Apparently. But accidentally or on purpose? That’s the real question.”
“What do you mean?” Tierney felt the hair prickle on her neck.
“How do we know his buddy didn’t do him in? Sometimes winter has that effect on people.” The driver chuckled.
Tierney shifted uncomfortably. When, after a moment’s delay, Robert also snickered, she elbowed him to make him stop.
“My name’s Ned, by the way. I’m just funning with you.” The driver glanced at Tierney. “But people do get in trouble up here—all the time. Right now lots of folk, like you two, are coming into the country because of the pipeline. There’s bound to be some tragedies before it’s all over.”
“How long have you been here?” Robert asked him.
“Almost eight years,” Ned said. “I came up for college, UAF, and fell in love with Fairbanks. Fell in love with my girlfriend, too—now my wife. We built our own cabin. Sixteen by twenty-four.” Tierney could hear the pride in his voice.
Robert leaned forward, the better to converse. “Really? Like a log cabin?”
Ned nodded.
“No kidding,” said Robert admiringly.
“Everybody up here builds log cabins. It’s no big deal.”
“I would love to do that,” Robert said.
“Maybe you will,” Ned said. “Stranger things have happened in the land where the mountains are nameless.”
Nameless mountains, Tierney thought. It was a perfect description for this enormous rugged place.
Robert suddenly leaned forward. “Look!” He pointed to the side of the road where a large, somewhat ungainly animal was standing knee-deep in a shallow pond, lifting its head from the water, a mouthful of pale green vegetation dripping from its jaws. Tierney couldn’t believe how big the moose was.
“Wow.” Robert sounded like a little boy.
“Lots of meat on that one,” Ned said. “Seriously,” he continued after another mile, “you two should take care. Some real screwballs are coming north these days. Schemers and dreamers. And ne’er-do-wells, sorry to say.” He nodded toward Tierney. “A lady hitchhiker went missing outside Anchorage a few months back. Troopers still don’t have any leads.”
Once again, Tierney shivered. This guy seemed perfectly nice, but what if he were some kind of psychopath himself? She tried to remember if they’d passed any other vehicles since they’d climbed into his truck. There was actually nothing to stop Ned from pulling off the road and murdering them.
Instead of exercising caution, however, Robert continued to act like a puppy-dog, practically fawning over their driver. “Have you ever done any survival stuff up here?”
Ned grinned. “You mean, on purpose?” In a more serious tone, he added, “People who spend much time here don’t usually go looking for ways to make it harder than it already is. Oh, every now and again, a European or a Japanese shows up who wants to walk solo across the Alaska Range or something crazy like that.”
Robert continued a little breathlessly, “You know that movie that came out a couple of years ago with Robert Redford: Jeremiah Johnson? About a mountain man?”
“Can’t say as I do.”
“Have you seen it?” Robert asked Tierney, who shook her head. “I love that movie,” he sighed. “I’d like to try to live like that—off the land.”
So that’s what had drawn Robert to Alaska, as well as the lure of the money to be made on the pipeline. What was it that drew her, Tierney wondered, beyond a fresh start in a new place?
Ned smiled again and shook his head. “Not my thing. I just want to finish my doctoral thesis and get a decent job.”
As he and Robert compared notes on their educations, Tierney wondered what it might be like to finish high school in Alaska. So far, her focus had been on getting to Alaska; now she considered what would happen if she stayed. Her dad would shit a brick if she dropped out of school, especially since she only had a year left.
“You two trying for pipeline jobs?” Ned asked.
“I heard you have to get a union card first?” Robert sounded unsure of himself.
Ned shook his head. “If you don’t already have the card, and you’re not already residents, and you aren’t Alaska Native, which I take it you’re not, you should probably forget about it.” He glanced briefly at Tierney. “Are you Native? You might be able to pass. But if you’re not an enrolled member of a tribe, I don’t think it will do you any good.”
“I’m not trying to get on the pipeline,” Tierney protested. “He is.” She’d only ever had one paying job, besides babysitting, and that was working weekends this past school year as a bus-girl and dishwasher at Milly’s All-You-Can-Eat. She was beginning to wonder if Alaska was as much of a man’s world as North Dakota. If so, she might have a hard time finding work.
Robert nudged her. “We could be better off looking for jobs in Anchorage than in Fairbanks.” He looked flushed and unhappy.
“Okay,” she said. “Because I really, really need to make some money.”
“Anchorage is a lot bigger than Fairbanks,” Ned said. “You two should have no problem finding work there.”
“So if that’s the case, we’re going to need to backtrack a little.” Robert suddenly seemed like a much younger, more insecure version of himself. Get a grip, Tierney willed him telepathically; you’re a college graduate, for Pete’s sake. This is not the end of the world.
Ned slowed the pick-up and did his best, since there was no shoulder, to pull onto the side of the road without driving over the lip of it. “We would’ve been glad to put you up for a few days,” he said, “but really, I don’t think you have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting on the pipeline.” Once they’d gotten their backpacks from the bed of his truck and set them on the ground, he handed Tierney half a bag of raisins, an unopened family-sized Hershey bar, and some reddish-brown strips of what he said was home-made caribou jerky. She figured he could tell they were hungry. “Good luck, you two.”
They spent several hours there, swatting at the occasional oversized but sluggish mosquitoes, eating most of the raisins and all of the chocolate, and gnawing on strips of jerky.
“This is so good,” Robert enthused. “Caribou. Wow.”
He played his harmonica; Tierney wished she had a book. Barely ten vehicles passed them the entire time.
Finally a beat-up sedan, its rusty front bumper attached to the car’s hood with a twisted coat hanger, pulled over. Three people shared the front seat: two unkempt young men flanking a dusky-skinned middle-aged woman with long black hair, who looked as if she were twice as old as the two scruffy white guys. After loading their backpacks into the trunk, Tierney and Robert climbed gratefully into the back seat, voicing their thanks. Tierney smelled the sour sweetness of beer immediately.
As the driver gunned it, the lady in the front seat hoisted a six-pack to her shoulder and asked without turning around if they wanted any. Olympia. Oly. Tierney’s dad’s brand. She and Robert both declined politely. Tierney noticed lots of gray and white strands in the curtain of black hair that hung before her.
“Sure?” the woman asked. “It’s free.” She laughed hoarsely, and Tierney wondered if she were drunk. Out of politeness, Tierney refrained from stealing a glance at Robert but sensed that he, too, was ill at ease. If they hadn’t just spent such a long time waiting for a ride, it might have been smart to pass this one up. The two men turned out to be something called “roustabouts” and when Tierney asked what that meant, the taller one, riding on the passenger side, swiveled his head toward her to explain that they worked on “rigs” in a place that sounded like Lower Kuginlit. Was that an Eskimo village? Tierney wondered. And was the lady from there?
Before Tierney could duck his hand, Tall Guy reached back to stroke her cheek, saying, “Pretty little thing. You want to sit on m
y lap?”
The driver laughed raucously. “Good one, Surfer.”
“Drilling rigs?” Robert asked, leaning forward abruptly, which caused Surfer to withdraw his outstretched arm. Was Robert actually trying to protect her, or was he just taking an interest in the conversation? “Do you need a union card to get hired?”
“No way,” the driver said. “It ain’t exactly the pipeline.” He and his fellow worker guffawed loudly. The driver chug-a-lugged his beer, dropping the empty bottle onto the floor at the woman’s feet, where it clinked against what sounded like another empty. “Matter of fact, me and Surfer here just put in our applications for the Big One, the biggest, baddest construction job in the history of the world.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But everyone and his brother wants a job on that mother.” He and Surfer stared at each other before bursting into laughter.
“You’re a fuckin’ poet, Wendell.” Surfer swung his face toward the back seat again. “You two coming from there, too? Fairbanks?”
“Squarebanks,” quipped the woman as Robert and Tierney shook their heads in unison.
“Squarebanks is a fucking circus,” said Wendell. “I need another brew.”
Surfer uncapped a bottle of beer for his fellow roustabout, then tipped his own bottle to his lips and swallowed before turning to the occupants of the back seat again. “You two want to party with us in Tok?”
“No!” Robert sounded alarmed. “I mean, thanks anyway, but we’ve got to get to Anchorage.”
“Having a baby or something?” Wendell asked, making his friends in the front laugh again.
